June was the wettest since records began, and July has followed suit with no sign of improvement in the near future.

Retailers are suffering on the high street, as consumers are loathed to spend money on summer clothes while it is tipping it down outside. “Consumers don’t buy summer clothes because it’s summer, they buy them because it’s warm” said Mike Nicholson, Director of Mobile, at The Weather Channel. “Our unique weather triggering technology, that allows retailers to advertise only when the sun makes a rare appearance is more relevant than ever during this dismal summer. We enable advertisers to cut out wasted impressions, and increase their return on investment as a result. We can’t change the weather, but we can change the results your advertising achieves during this drab old summer.”

Jenny Slungaard, from Debenhams told us that during the wettest April in 100 years that they saw “an uplift of +414% on umbrella sales vs last year! Sales of sandals have been affected when it rains, however over the sunny spells we have seen sales increase +36% vs last year.”

I’m afraid the wet weather is set to stay for the rest of July at least. If you would like to talk to The Weather Channel’s media team about how we can help you target the right weather condition for your brand, please call Kim Allen on (020) 3618 5771 or email kallen@weather.com

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We don’t see any drivers around the northern Hemisphere to bring changes to the current circulation in the coming weeks. For the UK to see warmer and drier weather we need the jet stream to move back north by at least 10 to 15 degrees so the Atlantic low pressure development tracks are much further north. The current blocking pattern with below normal temperatures through the atmosphere over the NE Atlantic is expected to persist until the end of July, and most likely into August.

Influences that may alter the mid latitude circulation are most likely to be tropical activity related to increasing Pacific temperatures or El Nino. At the moment though the state is still neutral and may only become a weak El Nino. This will be too late to make much impact on our summer. Other features that can influence us later in the summer we be any Hurricane activity in the Atlantic and the tracks Hurricanes take, but again this will be near the end of summer for the UK and not possible to predict this far out.

In the shorter term there is yet more widespread rain to move across southern Britain on Thursday night and Friday with a high risk of flooding. Not quite as severe as recently, but with the ground saturated it won’t take much to raise rivers. During Friday Wales and the SW may receive another 25 to 45mm in 24-hours, which is a good half of the normal monthly July total.